City of Tucson Evidence, Property and Identification Center

Letter of Commendation from Attorney General, Terry Goddard "State of the Art Facility - Effective Adaptive Reuse of City Property".

The project consisted of remodeling an existing 70,000 SF warehouse building purchased by the City of Tucson in an industrial area of town. The program called for incorporating 50,000 SF for the Evidence Storage Division and about 20,000 SF for the Identification Division Crime Scene Unit, Latent Print labs, AFIS unit, and photo studio. The overall building design was conceived as an onion of layered hard and soft security measures to protect both the primarily civilian staff and the evidence itself. The existing envelope is a tilt up concrete structure which provides a good first line of hardened defense; the openings in the existing envelope were in-filled with masonry, security mesh, and bullet resistant glazing to maintain the integrity of the overall envelope. Once within the outer perimeter, there is a secondary hardened security perimeter to gain access to the evidence storage warehouse, once within the secondary perimeter there is a third level of hardened security to protect the high value/ high threat evidence items (drugs, guns, and money), again all access points are hardened and protected by a card access door control system, and video surveillance. The Evidence Division has implemented an evidence tracking system over the last several years, and they needed a facility that would support the protocol required by the BEAST as well as the protocol required to sustain the chain of evidence in the eyes of the judicial system. High density storage systems, integrated security systems, cameras and biometric access control are just some of the complex systems in the facility. A loading dock was provided within a secure parking area for the loading and unloading of large amounts of evidence, or for the loading of items for disposal. Again several layers of security are provided to protect the staff and the evidence. All of the intake and disposal staging areas are designed like sally ports or air locks. The interior doors to the warehouse have to be closed for the outer bay doors to be open and vice versa, this keeps the secure perimeter intact at all times.